Posts by Kent Dicken
Innnntroducing…Rent-a-Brain!
Are you responsible for too many initiatives, an overabundance of priorities, an excess of tasks at hand with way too few fingers to get it done? Are you a slam-packed, schedule-smacked, shell-shocked, docket-pocked shell of your former self, trying your best to appease particularly pesky purveyors of arbitrarily outrageous deadlines? In short, has the fun…
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How to spot a silo
Departmental silos are still one of the biggest problems at credit unions, and I am always surprised when a CEO is unaware of them. Maybe it is because I grew up around small rural midwestern towns. Every day you would see silos outlined against the sky, dwarfing the other farm buildings. It was common knowledge that these tall, windowless tubes…
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Not your Grandma’s Credit Union
PROBLEM: Harvester Financial is a small credit union that needs to grow. The manufacturing plant where they started had been closed years ago by their original SEG, which itself had been sold and merged into another company. Even with mergers membership was aging, and the credit union wanted to update their image in order to bring in younger members. While their…
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Content Marketing is all about the conversation
Everyone loves a good story. Numerous studies have even shown that our brains respond more to stories than cold, hard facts. That’s probably why stories have been a primary Branding & Marketing tool since, well, forever, and why they became a priority once content marketing and social media took off. After all, someone has to fill all that space. It’s not…
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Consuming life, one chunk at a time.
Our life is fragmented. Our attention span is short. Our phones have become permanently attached, which means we are always accessible to the world, with tech (Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and email) just a tap away. Life keeps us moving, pulling us this direction one minute, another direction the next, only leaving time to consume…
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When it comes to budgeting for web sites, you’re doing it wrong.
When it comes to budgeting for web sites, you’re doing it wrong. Here’s why: Your website is more visible than your branches. Your website gets 10 times more traffic in a month than any branch, with members logging in multiple times to pay bills, check balances, and transfer between accounts. Even non-members check your site before coming in…
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What ad agencies and credit unions have in common
Ad agencies have a real problem; they don’t like being called ad agencies. For most of the people working in the industry today that term should have been left behind, maybe as far back as in the ’60’s (especially once it was overly-romanticized by the TV series “Mad Men”). But if nothing else, that show has shown the enormous changes…
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Video is eating the internet (and how to get on the menu)
There are 300 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute. Cisco tells us that by 2019, video will be 80% of all consumer internet traffic, up from 64% in 2014. Video on demand will double by 2019, with over 70% of that HD. Thankfully broadband speeds are supposed to double in that same time…
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Does your marketing calendar pass the Google test?
It’s human nature to keep doing the same thing year after year, and Credit Union marketers are no different. CUs tend to push home equity loans in the Spring, car loans in the Fall*, and Visa cards right before the holidays – because they always have. Now if that sounds like your entire Marketing Plan, then you should probably bring in some outside help. In…
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More Bang for the Buck: Bricks or Clicks?
Brick and mortar branches certainly aren’t going away. You’ll always need face-to-face interaction with members. But in-person service isn’t cheap – in 2014, the average credit union branch cost over $2 million to build and equip. Even buying and refurbishing a closed branch of a competitor won’t save a lot of that cost. Sure, you…
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